Quote:"The two-person crew of an Indian air force Sukhoi Su-30MKI ejected safely before the strike aircraft crashed near Pune in western India on 13 December.

Sources have said initial indications point to a failure involving the aircraft's fly-by-wire flight control system. The air force has established a court of inquiry to investigate the factors behind the accident.

The mishap is believed to have been the third crash to have involved an Su-30MKI in Indian service."

Fortunately, the crew ejected safely before it crashed. Three crashes for a relatively new in-service type is quite disturbing.

The timeline of the crashes runs parallel to the rapid rampup of the MKI fleet, from just a 40-odd fleet in the hands of IAF's best in the first several years (originally MKs, replaced with IAPO MKIs), to a relatively fast rampup in numbers as HALs output came out, and squadrons were rapidly constituted; the current fleet numbers around 140 aircraft, up more than 3x from half a decade ago. It will increase to 280 or so by 2015.

IAF needs to pause and consider its training and operational doctrines to address such an increase in airframe numbers. Hopefully this hull loss incident will serve as a warning to them. After a very long period of stagnation, they're in the process of rapid upgradation in the next few years - several more MKI squadrons, especially facing the Sino-Indian border, multiple LCA squadrons, the MRCA (Rafale please ) squadrons, then PAK-FA in the latter half of the decade.